SmartTranscript of House Healthcare - 2025-02-05 - 3:45 PM

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[Chair Alyssa Black ]: February fifth fifth, and we're continuing our conversation around reference based pricing, and we have Devin Green in from VAWS. So now go ahead, Devin. [Devin Green ]: Hi, Devin Green, Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. Thank you for having me, and thank you for fitting me into your schedule. I really appreciate it. So as I've mentioned, we are open to all. We understand the crisis. We're open to all sorts of solutions, including reference based pricing. And what we're just looking to do is understand the how the proposal would work, how it fits in with global budgets, and also the impact that it will have on hospitals in terms of access, and mainly access, but also quality, and, also the financial impact too. As you all know, we are in a fragile place when it comes to hospitals, and so, I feel like we may be at a different starting point than in other states, potentially. And just to talk a little bit about those other states, I did reach out to my Montana counterpart, and he said that, yes, it was implemented in Montana through their state employee plan. It was not done by legislation. The latest contract has backed away a bit from pure reference based pricing. They want flexibility. The state wants more flexibility in terms of, how they're going to set things and how they're going to do it. So, there are some changes happening there. And then in Oregon, I do think it's interesting. They have a number of exemptions, hospitals with fifty or fewer beds, critical access hospitals, sole community hospitals in counties with less than seventy thousand people and hospitals with Medicare comprising over forty percent. And so those would essentially eliminate, all but one of our hospitals from the policy. And I'm happy to answer questions. [Chair Alyssa Black ]: Well, Mike, which you sort of just answered my question was, since you gave us the great what is a hospital? And so we know, you know, if, you know, would VAWS be open to or be amenable to possibly doing things like eliminating critical access hospitals and maybe doing something around that if we exempted. Because I realize that the payment models on each of the levels of what is a hospital that you showed us is different. [Devin Green ]: Yeah. And when you say eliminate critical access hospital, we do mean exempt them from this. [Chair Alyssa Black ]: And eliminate them from any puzzles. Okay. It's a wrong word. That's it's a word. [Devin Green ]: You've done a lot of else. [Chair Alyssa Black ]: I'll leave it anywhere. [Devin Green ]: You know, I think so there are benefits to reference based pricing. Right? Right? And you heard some of those today in terms of just the ease of understanding and the standardization of it all. And it could potentially depending on where it's at, it could be helpful to some hospitals. So I think we're we're open to looking at proposals and letting you know what the impact would be. [Chair Alyssa Black ]: Any questions for Devin? All right. Well, thank you for coming in. Thank you. [Devin Green ]: All [Chair Alyssa Black ]: right. So I think we're done for the day. Thanks, everybody, for coming back.
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